Scanning
by morbidgypsy
Summary: She was looking for a way to make some caps.  They were looking for information on something both lost and valuable.  The three of them found that they could offer something to both themselves and the wasteland around them, or die.
1. Chapter 1

Scan the room, pan back and listen hard for the small sounds that could mean company. It was something that she had done so many times that by now if she didn't need to use her eyes to see, she could have done it without them.

Scan the room, pan back and listen hard for the small sounds. After the second time she moved in a quick half crawl that took her into a room with a door still attached to it. A quick pocket rooting grab and a small spray can was pulled out and pointed at the hinges of the door. The small hissing sound of the spray was repeated again on the lower hinge and then the door was silently pushed closed. That was a trick that had been used many times. Ever so silently she twisted the lock closed.

The door wouldn't hold out against the giant mutant that seemed to be sniffing her out, but it would give her at least some warning. Anything and everything could be used as help.

She turned, her eyes scanning the room before her. Few details bothered to store themselves in her memory. The only one that truly drew her eyes in a most reverent manner were the windows, two of them. Both were nearly six feet tall and hinged in the middle. Somehow they had both survived Armageddon, neither had a crack.

She moved smoothly across the room to pear out the dusty glass that had somehow survived a few hundred years of weather after a nuclear apocalypse.

Outside was cloudy with the threat of rain coming, yet another thing to dodge if it was. Since Project Purity had first started the chance of having acid rainstorms had decreased drastically, especially after Purity 2, 3 and 4 had been started around the country. No the bigger worry she had now was how she was going to get down four stories.

The roar of a frustrated mutant seemed to rattle the building, thankfully from a story above her. She unhinged the window and sprayed the hinges before trying to open it. She peered out the window, sucking in the air that tasted so good after spending the better part of a day in a dusty old office building. She had hoped to find something here solely because an office building would offer so little to people. No such luck.

Well there was a ledge just below this one that if she was careful she could probably lower herself onto. It would be tricky, but she might be able to grab the side of the building for support and keep herself from falling. That would get her down one story and she might be able to then jump to the second story before finally trying to make a jump to the ground.

There was a good chance that she would just end up falling four stories down onto the broken pavement and scattered debris, but it was either that or let the big ugly thing catch her. Knowing that they ate their victims, usually before they died made her certain that the fall was preferable.

She had one leg out the window when she suddenly realized that she wasn't alone.

"You don't suppose she missed us do you?" An amused male voice asked from what had looked to be empty space behind her.


	2. Chapter 2

She was drawing her gun while she spun around to meet this new threat. How had they hidden when she had scanned the entire room and why would they be in the office building? There was nothing here, but endless file cabinets of paper that had mostly gone to mush and dust. Maybe they had somehow gotten the bogus tip that she had gotten too.

"I do rather think she did." The other more serious sound one responded. He gestured with a laser rifle that she shouldn't bother lifting her gun any further. Realizing how badly she had messed up, she complied by holstering her pistol. Laser pistol to be exact, she hadn't been able to afford the rifle yet, but eyeing his she wished that she had saved up a little harder.

"What do you want?" She immediately demanded. They could be raiders, but she had never seen raiders so well equipped as these seemed to be. They also didn't look like either Enclave or Brotherhood to her so she just stared and waited for their response. Whatever they were was likely going to prove troublesome. Any of the groups did sooner or later.

The most recent speaker stepped closer. He was nearly six and a half feet tall and she stepped back just from the intimidation of his height and solid mass. He seemed to be nothing but hard muscles under the fatigues that he wore. That unspoken threat made him almost as scary as the rifle the he held leveled at her.

Upstairs the mutant roared again and they all glanced upward as its heavy feet pounded across their ceiling in a run. Apparently it had heard something, hopefully not them. As the dust of the mutants passing overhead settled, their eyes lowered and they began evaluating each other and the threats that they offered each other. She could tell that she was dismissed as a threat rather quickly. It stung a bit, but not being a threat also could mean a lesser chance that they would become dangerous to her.

"We are looking for information on something called Alpha Project Claret. Have you heard anything about it?" His eyes were dark and piercing even though he was merely looking at her. She got the feeling that he was placing value and consideration on everything that she wore. As though with just that look he could see everything that she had ever done and was judging her for it. It was unnerving. No one should be able to look that deeply into another person.

She knew that the slight twitch she had made upon hearing that name had given her away. She had never heard the entirety of the name, but she had heard of A. '42. It had been scribbled on a coaster that had somehow ended up preserved in a bottle at the bottom of the rubble of an old bar.

The less serious man stepped closer from the shadows and her jaw dropped. Mutant, but not like the one upstairs. This man was tall and lithe where the other was brawn. His mutant genes could be seen in his extremely pale skin and spider silk white hair. She tilted her head trying to see his eyes, but even in these shadows he wore dark glasses to cover what she expected to be pinkish eyes. His jaw was sharp and though his lips seemed frozen in a frown there was a curve to them that peaked her curiosity even under these circumstances.

"You have heard of it." He said and she suddenly wondered if this one could see more than his larger friend. A scary thought since the first had seemed to be able to see her soul.

"Get me safely out of here and we can talk about it." She whispered quickly when she heard the mutant's heavy footsteps barreling down the stairs just at the end of the hallway. The creature was coming down the same path that she had and would no doubt be here in mere moments. It wouldn't care about the noise that it was making. If mutants ever got sneaky the human population would drop dramatically.

The two men glanced at each other and were suddenly in motion.

The bigger man rushed to the window, smashing the glass and clearing if of the frame, while the smaller man thrust an odd looking gun forward. The poor window had survived for so long, but at last had not opened far enough for their need and so had crumbled. The weapon he held was squat and fat and when he shot it, the ammo rocketed out the window and embedded itself down in the old macadam of the street. There was a thin rope attached to it and she instantly understood their intent.

The smaller man pulled a bent metal bar out of a jacket pocket. The bar had leather wrapped around either end of it. He positioned it to straddle the rope and he held one side of the pole in each hand before then he flung himself out the window.

Her eyes went big and she moved towards the window but was pulled back by the larger man. "Put your arms around my neck and hold on tightly." He growled out as he hooked his own identical metal bar over the rope. He presented her his back and she looped her arms around his neck. He wasn't huge like the mutant upstairs was, but he was large for a human. She still worried that he wouldn't be strong enough to carry her down the rope, but her fear was quickly escalating to outweigh her worry.

She could hear the footsteps pounding closer when the man she was holding flung the both of them out the window. The ride was surprisingly smooth and almost enjoyable for the first two seconds. They were halfway down the rope when she heard wood splintering behind them. The mutant had found their room. Their voices had not been loud so she wasn't sure what had brought it to their hiding spot; that made her worry.

On the ground below them the smaller man opened fire with his own weapon.

They landed, she dropped her grip and stepped back as the man she had been holding pulled his rifle off his back and aimed at the mutant that had unwisely stuck its ugly head out the window. Three blasts later and the mutant was gripping his greenish colored face and backing away. One of the shots had hit it in the jaw, not a fatal shot for a creature that healed just about any wound done to it.

Her eyes were locked on the hand the mutant was holding over his face. It was different than normal mutants and as it stepped out of view she knew where she had seen a hand like that before. A Deathclaw. The big green ugly had the hands of a Deathclaw.

Shit.


	3. Chapter 3

They ran a good hour before, finally with only her panting, coming to a stop. The two men slowed and looked back at her as though her being in not as good of shape as them was an oddity. She felt a hefty amount of shame that she had been the one to stop, but knew that half the wasteland couldn't keep up the fast pace that they were setting for this long. The ability to run when you were underpowered was one of the things that kept you alive in this wasteland, yet here she was, still alive, and not running.

She staggered to a stop and stared up at the two men. Honestly she could have continued, but they didn't appear to have anyone chasing them anymore and she had questions.

"So who are you two?" She finally asked when neither of them appeared to have anything to say to her.

They shared a glance that spoke volumes about their knowledge of each other's way of thinking. Looks like that said that they had been a team for a long while and something niggled at the back of her mind that maybe they were something else as well. Did that upset her? Should it? Yes and no, respectively.

"Michael." The one who had carried her down the rope said as though he was leaving out vast amounts of information. There was just a quality to his voice that made it sound like the word was only the first in a sentence and not the entirety of his response, but he said nothing else that would fill in the gap. She was good at reading people when she was actually around them and she could see a thousand secrets swirling behind this guy's eyes.

Not so with his paler counterpart.

"Greg." And the way he said his name was like an axe swung into wood. The finality in the sound had her backing up a step before she realized that he wasn't actually making a move towards her. "Now we have answered your questions and completed our part of the bargain with extra, so talk."

"I found an old coaster at the bottom of a bar. It had been kept protected so the writing on it was still good. It had said A. '42. That's all that I know."

"42?" Michael asked with a grin that was both on his face and in his voice.

She nodded.

"What's your name?" Greg asked drawing her attention. His head turned to peer closer at her, the barest hint of a smile graced his lips. His shoulder length white hair fell forward a bit to block the lower part of his face, hiding that ghost of a smile. It was the practiced kind of flirtatious move that a man would know he looked good doing and damn but he did.

"Fiona." She jumped forward when the slightest lean back had her bumping into the other man, Michael. How had he come up behind her so silently? When his hands skimmed up her arms her eyes widened and she stilled completely, but for her suddenly rapid breathing.

The warmth of Michaels voice floated by her ear as he moved close enough for his chest to brush against her back. They shared a look and Greg was moving closer to her as well, closing in on her. They were a team, they worked together and now she was suspecting that they did other things together as well.

"Fiona what is it you do exactly here in the wastes of what humanity left behind?" Greg asked while his fingers brushed against her jaw and pushed her hair back behind one of her ears.

Fiona was trapped by them. Not forcefully, but Michael was gently running his hands along her arms and then down her hips as well, while Greg was moving closer as though he were prepared to kiss her. She wanted that, but she wasn't sure why beyond that they were both damns sexy.

His lips moved closer and the smile parted slightly as he slowly lowered his lips to hers.

"42?" Michaels deep voice again warmly tickled her ear. "Nothing more than that?"

Fiona trembled as Greg's lips hovered just slightly above hers. If his hands weren't holding her jaw in place she would have leaned forward to complete the distance between them. Instead she had to hover there and try to understand what Michael was saying because she felt lost. Focusing was impossible on anything but Greg's lips and she wasn't sure why because she had never seen either of them before today.

"Tell me about 42 Fiona. Tell me and he will kiss you." Michael purred out behind her while the devil in front of her grinned wider and let his tongue trace along the outside of her mouth.

"The bar was barely there. Half the bar was in a pile of rubble. I didn't know why they had decided to run the place without cleaning it up first, but they had. I had bought a water, dirty, it had been all I could afford at the time, last week. The bartender didn't exactly want me there since I was such a low paying customer so I stayed to the back of the room. The back was the least fixed up and there were still tables smashed under a pile of what had been part of the ceiling. Real low quality place. I sat on the floor near the pile of filth and drank my water. There was a jar a little ways into the mess that was upside down and though it was dirty I could see that something was in it so I scratched the filth off the glass so that I could see what was inside. Glass unbroken could prove valuable and inside it was an old cardboard coaster. The coaster was red, or had been, but no design was on it. The words written on it were A.'42. The building we were in was called Axle Paxton and I thought maybe there would be a room 42 with something in it. I had only spotted the building today and realized that it might be connected, but there was nothing in there."

She finally trailed away, panting, but certain that she had told them everything that she could remember. That should be enough to have his lips shift down to hers, gods she needed his lips on hers. Fiona swallowed and shivered as Michael's strong arms held her in place while Greg kissed the very corner of her mouth.

The male chuckle that followed the very feminine mew of disappointment left her even more disoriented.

"That's all that I know." She murmured as she tried to follow Greg's retreat.


	4. Chapter 4

Fiona awoke to the taste of dirt. She closed her cottony dry mouth and found that she had half a mouthful of dirt and rocks. That at least explained the taste, if not why she was eating it. She spit the dirt out as best she could and wasn't sure if it was easier to get out of her mouth because of the dryness or if it was more difficult for the same reason. She was able to pull herself up enough that her arms could support her torso and just let her head hang for a while.

Where was she? She pulled her head in one direction and found herself looking at a rusted out shopping cart that was missing all of its wheels. Beyond it was the dried up scrub that seemed to be what so much of this land looked like these days. It had been normal while growing up, but now that Project Purity had truly kicked in, the deadness was more difficult to see without cringing. The areas around where the Projects were was green and apparently some very expensive real estate now. Funny since that tended to be the watery areas that had been avoided as early as a few years ago due to the crustaceous mirelurks.

She let her head swing in the opposite direction and found herself staring at the dulled silver of one an old vehicle. No one today had ever seen one moving and to Fiona they looked like large silver bullets with a transparent middle. The proof that they were vehicles and not strange wheeled bullets was sitting in the passenger seat and staring with the eternal skeletal grin that was so common to find in old, unused places these days.

Shifting to sit up straight brought waves of nausea and dizziness, but she did it anyway. She felt drugged and wondered what those two men had done to her. Michael had just been petting her and she hadn't felt anything like a pinprick from him so she didn't think he had injected anything. She knew she hadn't taken anything. Greg had kissed the side of her mouth and even now she felt the pull to have more from him.

_Slut._

Her head spun back to the vehicle. Surely the skeleton hadn't just called her what she thought it had. "You can shut up. You're just jealous." Talking to herself or inanimate objects was nothing new. It happened when too much time was spent alone and she had made a habit of spending time alone because so few people could be trusted that she didn't want to risk taking any of them with her. These two were a prime example of that. They had done something to her.

_And you want more done to you._

Her eyes narrowed at the skeletal grin that seemed oddly wider. She did want more. Low in her belly she felt the pleasant clenching that told her that she needed to get a bit of relief. Whatever they had done to her had addled both her mind and her sex drive. So be it, the fog in her head was rapidly fading and soon she would try standing up.

Alpha Project Claret and the number 42 rattled around in her head. She had told them everything she knew about that just because they had asked her too. That was strange and she knew that whatever they had done had happened then. Whatever this Project was worth something to them and therefore it was probably worth something to her as well.

Almost as an afterthought she checked for her pistol. It was still on her hip, odd that they hadn't taken that. A quick search showed that they hadn't actually taken anything from her. They had left her here, in the dirt, but hadn't done the typical robbing that so many others would have. Why? Didn't they need the extra caps that the pistol and few items she owned could have gotten them. Where they being nice? Nice after drugging her and leaving her in the dirt seemed odd.

_You just want to find them. _

She had just pulled her gun to shoot the skeleton back to being quiet when she heard a slight scuffle that was familiar to her. Mole rat. She scanned back and forth, looking for the source of the sound and spotted it right as it started to charge her. Being prone in a sitting position lead the speed of fear in her shooting and with three shots it was a slightly scorched version of dead, less than a meter away from her.

She was panting from both fear and the weakness that whatever they had done to her had caused, but she forced herself to stand on wobbly legs anyway. Molerats often roamed in packs and the very idea of sitting down while another of them came after her was enough to fuel strength back into her.

The molerat was a solid looking beast and she used her knife to strip enough meat off of it for a few meals. If she got a fire going tonight she could have a pretty tasty and hot meal. Night wasn't far off though so she would have to get working on that. She packed the meat in a couple strips of leather that were cured for just the purpose of carrying wet meat. The rest of the beast would be found by something else and consumed. Nothing was wasted out here in the wasteland.

She stood after stashing the meat and found a dual set of prints on the other side of the molerat. That would be Michael and Greg heading off to find their al important APC 42. Well it wasn't dark yet and if she was lucky she might be able to join them at their fire up ahead, if she found it. If she didn't find them tonight, she would find them tomorrow. There were questions she wanted answered and she was a little annoyed at waking up in the dirt. She was lucky the mutant hadn't followed them here and found her while she was sleeping.

Fiona started walking and from behind her she heard the skeleton speak one last time.

_Oh the boys will be sorry for not playing with you, wont they?_


	5. Chapter 5

Scanning chapter 5

The stars were pretty, but what she liked most was the telltale hint of light that was coming from just the blackness of the small hill. It might not be the people she was looking for, but the hint of flickering that screamed campfire was enough to make her think that it likely was. The dark of night had firmly settled and any light was easy to see. She had lost their footprints once it had gotten dark, but since they had never once deviated from heading in this direction, she had taken the chance that they had continued this way.

She wondered if they were cautious enough to have someone stay awake as guard. Would they swap shifts through the night or were they arrogant enough that both of them slept. Fiona planned on quietly finding out and then finding herself a tree to climb into and sleep since she didn't have anyone to swap watch shifts with. Luckily all the extra sleep she had today was more than enough to have her still completely still awake. Maybe she would thank them for that later.

The position they had taken proved to be a well thought out one. The fire was down a small dip that was shaped like a bowl and if she moved in close enough to actually see the fire, they would see her cresting the rise, sneaky of them. Fiona crawled up as far as she could, then lay down on her back and stared up at the stars, listening. No one could see her here and if she stayed quiet she might be able to hear something worthwhile. The other option was to just make her presence known and she wasn't ready for that yet.

Two sets of footsteps seemed to be circling something, probably the fire. Then she heard a third and fourth. Her head cocked to one side as she realized that she might have come up on more than she had realized. These could be raiders after all, not the men she was looking for. Then she heard Greg's voice.

"But she said 42. 'APC 42.' I think that we could put our other numbers together and find this place." He was incessant. Whatever they were looking for meant a lot to him and she wondered if it should mean as much to her. Then she realized her mind was still not quite right and she let it go, but more numbers sounded interesting.

An unknown voice spoke. "We don't know if that number ends the first line or is somewhere in the second or even if she was talking about the same thing that we are. There is a vault tech vault nearby. We should check it for records. There might be something there about ours." If Greg sounded loyal to his cause, this man sounded like a zealot ready for the kill.

Michael was the next to speak. His voice was as dark and deep as the night around them. Fiona shivered half from that and half from the cold as she listened to his response. "We have tried that before and haven't come away with anything other than a bloody nose. None of those places are safe. We would have better luck just plugging the number in randomly a few times and giving it a try."

The derisive laughter that followed his response came from at least two throats. So now there were at least four people down there. Fiona bit her lip as the number went up and she was still the only one on this side of the hill with small stones digging into her back. It was looking like she would just have to back away and give up on pinning her two down for questioning. She wasn't sure why she thought of them as her two, but it had the right feel to it. It was unfortunate that they would only see her as a tagalong informant at best.

She sighted lightly and then sudden wished that she hadn't. Down below, the men around the fire had gotten deathly quiet. She crabwalked her way down the hill and had just stood up behind a pile of rubble when she spotted a figure coming over the hill in a half crouch walk. They had heard her. It should have been impossible for them to hear such a light sigh amongst such a loud conversation and the random crack of the fire, but they had.

It didn't matter. She could be quiet when need be and she was now. As soon as she was under some cover, an old bush that had only a few living twigs on it now, she stood and began running. She was almost a quarter mile away when from out of the darkness a humanoid form appeared. It was Greg. She slowed, feeding on the image of him.

"You followed us?" He asked as she stared stupidly.

"You left me in the middle of the street… you… left me." That last part was the part that hurt most, but even she couldn't fathom quite why.

"You remember me?" He seemed completely at a loss for some reason, though why she shouldn't remember someone like him was confusing. Gods he was gorgeous. When he stood near Michael it was like night and day, both sides stunning and one the better for the other's presence.

"Of course I do. Shouldn't I?" She was focused completely on him which was why she didn't see Michael until he tackled her. She fought, but it was pointless against his larger size and strength. He obviously knew exactly how to pin a foe down and he was quick at it.

Fiona was left staring at the dirt that she had woken up to earlier, but now it was with her arm pinned behind and between both her and the man that was on her back. She had to wonder if looking for them had been a good idea and also if she hadn't just gone back a few steps instead of making progress.


	6. Chapter 6

And I have realized that this has not been said yet so….Fallout and its counterparts are not mine and are not being used to make money. They are only played with to amuse myself and a few others. The characters not before seen in the Bathesda or Interplay games are my own and are therefore mine to do with as I please. Thank you so much for making the latest games as wonderful and beautiful as they are.

"No actually, you shouldn't." Greg said from above her. She would have watched him as he walked around her speculatively, but she was after all pinned to the ground by Michael. Thankfully Michael didn't seem to intent on hurting her and seemed content to just hold her in place.

"You're looking for this APC 42 thing. Why?" She asked ignoring the dirt that was mere millimeters from her lips. She hoped to at least get some information out of them. Something more than just Michael touching her a bit.

Fiona stared at the dirt as the silence hung in the air. She counted each little grain in front of her until she knew that as far as her peripheral vision could see there were 13,ooo grains of dirt or sand. Why was she so intent on touch? Touch from Michael, whose warmth felt so good to her even just while holding her down. If he were pinning her down for other reasons it could be damn erotic. Touch from Greg, who could apparently kiss her mental capacities away as well as make her toes curl.

"You remember everything don't you?" Greg asked. Did Michael never speak? 

"Shouldn't I?" She asked with every ounce of innocence in her voice.

"Not really, no." Greg said as though considering something.

Michael, above her, finally contributed. "You can't be around us. We left you because you are safer away from us than you will be near us." Greg crouched down so that he was closer to her and then Michael let her up enough that she could sit.

Michael still had a warm hand resting on her back like he thought she might run away again, but Greg was sitting right in front of her and between them she felt no such compunction. This was where she had wanted to be after all. It hadn't looked like she would get here, but now she had after all.

"I need to be with you. Your part of me." She pointed out and Greg glanced over her head. She turned to see Michael sharing the gaze. Had she said something wrong?

"Look at me Fiona. Look at my eyes." Greg insisted as he nudged her chin to insist that she tilt her head up to meet his gaze. His sunglasses were off and all she saw was the most beautiful purple rings around his irises. Purple eyes, beautiful and then his lips lowered to taste her mouth and she was leaning in to try to make more contact.


	7. Chapter 7

Fiona moaned and sat up, this time finding herself in a bathtub. At least she didn't have a mouthful of dirt to enjoy. Speaking of mouths, next time Greg went to kiss her she was planning on keeping her eyes closed. Both times the bastard had kissed her she had met his eyes and then woken up in alone in a strange place. Of course she was pretty sure that Michael had been touching her at the same time so maybe it was his fault or a combination of the two.

She looked around herself just to make sure that she wasn't about to be attacked by another molerat and happily found that this time they had left her in a room with a closed door and a ceiling. There was even a toilet and a sink here, though the sink looked like half of it had been smashed to the floor centuries ago. The linoleum flooring was covered in the commonplace layer of filth that most of the wasteland seemed to enjoy. She was safe, for now.

Then she heard a sound from beyond the door that separated her from the rest of the world. A small sound, like someone setting a drink down, but a sound like that in the wasteland meant that there was company of some kind out there.

Fiona ran her hands down her body in order to make sure that her gear was in fact _still_ there. The damn men weren't making a damn bit of sense to her, but she really didn't care at this point. For a while there she had felt almost like her mind had been in a haze and totally focused on the two males in question. If she admitted it to herself, which would be the only person that she would admit it to, it had been lust. Now she was able to look back on what had happened and see it clearly if not make a bit of sense of it. Whatever the men had done to her, they had expected it to make her forget about them completely.

She stepped out of the tub slowly, her old tire bottom boots making less than a whispers worth of sound on the floor. It wouldn't matter how quite she was though, there was no way that door would open silently. Even before she walked over to it she could see that it was crooked on its hinges and just the age of it would ensure that it squeaked when she opened it.

Figuring that it would either be locked and she was a prisoner or it wouldn't be and she would be free, Fiona turned the handle and pushed the door open.

Outside of her little safe haven she found a trader staring back at her. He had that same half dazed look that so many of the wanderers had, the same appearance that they had seen too much and traded too many nasty trades to stay quite sane. This guy was older so by rights had to be good at what he did. The idiots were weeded out at a much younger age.

"Finally awake are you?" He asked with a slight bob of his shaggy white locks. Do you remember your name?"

There the question of her remembering was again. "I remember mine, do you remember yours?" She asked with a slightly arrogant twang in her voice. She was tired of being discarded and she wanted to know why memory was such a key thing to these people.

The man blinked at her before letting a smile stretch across his weathered face. "They said you just might at that."

"They?" She asked cautiously while hoping he meant who she suspected he did. She couldn't explain it even to herself, but she felt something for Greg and Michael. They had no ties, no real bonding moments and no history, yet she felt a need to find them. Worse she wanted to be with them.

"Give me some names girl and I can answer more questions."

"Michael and Greg, big guy and a smaller man with white hair."

The man nodded and his beard bobbed with the motion. "That be them. They left something for you. If you were to wake up still knowing something about them I was to give you this." Out of one of his voluminous pockets, things that seemed to be nearly issued out to traders, he pulled out what at first looked like a thick bracelet. When he handed it over to her she saw that it was more of a cuff that would go around her wrist. It sort of resembled a Pip Boy, but it was only about four inches long and was smooth metal.

"What is this?" She asked as she flipped it over between one hand and then the other. On the bottom she found an etching. 'ACP Incorporated 2075

"They said it was something that might have meaning to you and even if it didn't, you twer put it on if you still wanted to find them. If you didn't remember them I wasn't to tell you anything and just send you on your way. So put it on will you?"

She looked at it, then him and then back to it again. ACP Incorporate could very well be the 'A.42' that she had found written on that coaster. Whatever it was the men had apparently thought the 42 meant something important. ACP didn't mean much to her when not applied to ammo, but this just seemed like it meant a lot more than a few stray bullets did. She knew just by the shine on the metal dated from so long ago that whatever she was walking into was something big and with a sigh she walked right into it.

Fiona slipped the bracelet onto her wrist.


	8. Chapter 8

It hadn't been on her wrist more than a second before she flinched at the feel of something jabbing her. She wrenched the bracelet off but it was too late. Whatever had been in the hidden needle felt warm as it coursed through her veins. The bracelet still looked smooth and didn't seem to have any openings or crevices that could have hidden what she had to think had been a needle.

Her eyes went wide and she fell to her knees as the felt the warmth touch her quicker than the hardest alcohol ever had. It had a similar burn, but instead of lessening, it just got worse. Her vision turned white and she went blind for long enough that she began to panic. She felt the arms of the trader around her and heard the gentle crooning of comfort from him. Her mouth was open but she couldn't seem to gain enough air to calm herself down. Blind in the wasteland meant death.

Then her vision began to clear and she found that it was not the same as it had been. Things were sharper and she could almost feel her mind cataloging things. Taking record of details that she would normally ignore. When she glanced up at the old trader she saw him and instantly knew that he weighed around 120 pounds and was about 60 years old. She somehow knew that his left leg was a bit lamer than his right.

She staggered to her feet and he let her go, not hindering her in the least. Fiona was thankful for that because in that moment she needed to know that she was under her own power. Whatever they had just pumped into her system was making changes faster than she could assimilate them. Her legs felt wobbly, but she found herself finding her balance so much quicker than she would have been able to before. Her movements felt smoother. It was like Jet without the extra kick of violence.

"What did you do?" She whispered out loud to no one that was in the room.

"_We don't know why you seemed partially immune to us, but we needed to make sure that you actually were if you plan on coming with us." _The deep voice ofMichael said from inside her head. Next to her ear it had done interesting things to her psyche, from inside her head it made her eyes want to cross.

Fiona let herself slide to the floor while she concentrated. Yes she had heard him and no she didn't think it was just a figment of her imagination. The question was how. Pip boys, which is what she had half suspected the bracelet to be, didn't work like this. Someone would have mentioned something about it by now. They had screens and interfaces. This was putting the interface in her own head and screen within her mind.

"Who are you?" She whispered out loud, not yet sure how to speak to them without her voice. Not yet even sure that this was all real.

_"We can explain what we know when you next meet up with us." _Greg said in that way that would have her staring at him, half entranced, if he were actually here. She could almost see his purple lined eyes in her head.

"You actually want me to meet up with you this time? You won't just knock me out again and leave me laying there like carrion?" She had to admit that she was a little bit bitter about that happening not once, but twice.

"_Never again, but know that if you come looking for us you are making a choice. You will be with us. Not just one, but both and we are searching for something that we had been set to seek for a long while now. That random clue that you found might be the answer or it might just mean more work. Come with us and you will be working towards that goal as well." _That wordiness came from Greg, but she could swear she heard murmurs of agreement from Michael.


End file.
